Polydactyly
by Megii of Mysteri OusStranger
Summary: "I don't know who you are exactly, but you have a strange influence over him, Miss Grentz. I suggest you watch your step. Whoever controls God controls death." Newly relocated to Baltimore, Maryland, Michelle is starting to think she may be in over her head, but the slow translation of her father's journals holds answers a past she never even thought to question.
1. Chapter 1

Polydactyly

_Michelle Grentz was born under Soviet rule and raised Canadian. She remembered nothing of the USSR save for the cloven scar in her head, hidden beneath tangles of golden silk, and the nightmares that came with it. Newly relocated to Baltimore, Maryland, she is starting to think she may be in over her head, but the slow translation of her father's journals hold answers to a past she never even thought to question, including the identity of her long lost "Annabell."_

_Notes: Story begins in Season One, Episode Eight of Hannibal (TV), Fromage, and dances a pirouette around canon. Starring characters and heavy influences from Hannibal Rising. Character ages are based on the ages of the actors._

* * *

**_One_**

* * *

Michelle Grentz rubbed at her face with her hands before wringing her fingers in her lap like a soggy dishrag, yielding water in the form of sweat. Michelle was a woman who kept a cool and controlled head, but the lights of the room were bright enough for her to feel a headache building up behind her eyes and it made her nervous. Her headaches were always severe and if she were to submit to this interview with a clear mind she would have liked to be capable of answering the police's questions coherently.

Everyone in the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra was affected by Douglas Wilson's murder. Michelle was probably the least affected of all of them. She was the orchestra's newest addition, and the most prestigious. In privacy, Wilson was what might have been called the least prestigious, something that he would have taken in good humor had he been alive to hear it. The local nature and unusual brutality of the murder had led to the FBI being put on the case and everyone in the orchestra found themselves answering more questions than people generally liked, especially the grieving. A few people were sitting alone, Michelle among them, but glancing around the concert hall she noted which instrumental groups huddled and whispered amongst each other like conspiring ravens. She frowned at them.

The interviews came and ended steadily, and she took a few minutes to escape to the bathroom, washing her sweating palms and throwing back her migraine medication. By the time she reentered the stage, the FBI were waiting for her.

"Name?"

"Michelle L. Grentz."

"Age?"

"Forty-three."

The interviewer, a tomboyish woman with short fingernails and a ponytail that was peeling back her hairline, spoke some formalities into a tape recorder before proceeding.

"Miss Grentz, how well did you know Douglas Wilson?"

Michelle folded her hands on the table, displaying the long, elegant fingers of a pianist. "Not well. I only joined the orchestra three months ago. Douglas was a very open and friendly man, but we never had reason to pursue one another socially outside of work. I spoke with him a few times when we went out to dinner in groups."

"Did he ever mention or speak about anyone that might have had reason to hurt or kill him?"

"Not that I recall. The trombone was Douglas' second instrument and he still played it a bit weakly, and unless instrument skill was a key in his murder I really can't imagine why someone would wish the poor man dead."

The FBI Agent ran them through a few more routine questions before dismissing the pianist. Michelle was plenty eager to head out and get away from the harsh lighting. She could feel her blood pounding in her temples in a painful staccato. Her medication wouldn't kick in until it hit her intestine and she needed to have a lie-in to ward the migraine off from getting bad until then.

Despite herself, she paused when passing the concert hall, peering inside. It was strangely empty now; only one man was standing around with an inquisitive eye. Doug was still on display like a second-hand violin strung up in a pawnshop window display, unplayable and non-repairable. It was sad and obscene, and she would not be surprised if a few members of the orchestra quit their jobs, fearful of being the next victim. She wondered if his family would have him buried or cremated. She wondered if the murderer got any sound of that lacerated larynx—an Adam's apple couldn't be played.

"You look like you've had a revelation."

She had enough dignity left in her to not jump. Turning, she saw the man whose face so often graced the national newspapers. He had a forceful presence she was surprised that she had missed, for he must have been watching her for a few moments at the very least. His hands were hidden in the pockets of his coat, but she imagined them to be very heavy hands. He had dark skin and darker eyes, though they peered out with a bright and sharply analytical gleam.

"I'm Agent Jack Crawford," he introduced.

"Michelle Grentz."

He looked from her to the slumped corpse and back again, his brown furrowed with curiosity. "Did you know Wilson?"

"Not well."

"You saw something."

"Pardon?" She felt her headache growing.

"Just now, while you were looking inside. You had the look of someone who has had an idea. Mind telling me what it is?"

She minded a little bit, yes. She pressed a hand to her temple and lightly scratched her cheekbone. "I had the thought that whoever killed Doug can't have known much about the human body. Or maybe even about singing. The voice box is more like a fleshy cleft in the throat, and produces sound by… contracting or widening when we breathe. Like… like when you hold a blade of grass between your thumbs and blow at it, it squeaks." She gestured at the auditorium. "Whoever turned Doug into a human cello tried to play on cartilage. Which wouldn't do anything, really." She tried to imagine the act and shuddered, her mouth pinching as she thought of a bow scraping across the dead man's exposed throat.

Crawford looked thoughtful, as though he was actually weighing her observations.

"Do you know much about human anatomy, Miss Grentz?"

"More than Doug's murderer, I would guess. But what I know is _music_, Agent Crawford. This guy probably does too, for all that he may not understand that a man can't sing if he's not breathing. Not just anyone knows how to build an instrument; that takes years to accomplish with the proper training."

He had an intimidating stance, but Michelle decided that she liked Jack Crawford. He was blunt and straightforward, but she supposed that came with the job. She could see cogs grinding in his mind like a tightly wound clock. This was a man who loved his job, but was also in sore need of a vacation.

He broke eye contact to observe the concert hall and the lone living man sitting in it. "I've read about you in the papers. You're the Philharmonic Orchestra's shining jewel, though it's a step down from the Metropolitan in New York."

Not this gossip again. "The Met is a demanding job and I attracted some unsavory attention. I thought getting away from the tabloids for a while would be good."

He nodded in understanding. "Nevertheless, you have a sharp eye."

"For _music_, Agent Crawford. If Doug's death hadn't been so," she gestured widely to the auditorium, "Musically centric, you'd find me thicker than _Les Miserables."_

At that, he quirked a grim-smile, "As a high-end musician, would you happen to know of any instrument-makers?"

Through the building throb behind her eyes, Michelle rummaged through her purse. Her business card was simple, eggplant-purple typeface set in pale grey. Even as she extended it, she felt the circles under her eyes deepening.

"Call me tomorrow morning. I'm owed a few favors and I'll see what I can do for you."

As he took it from her, she noted that his fingers were longer than she had expected. He had hands that spent more time filing reports than getting elbow-deep in someone's guts, however often he may have seen it.

"Thank you."

It was a very informal dismissal. He suddenly stepped away to talk to his colleague down in the stands. From a distance, Michelle recognized him as Will Graham. His presence in the local rag wasn't presented as very savory, described unflatteringly as Jack Crawford's unwitting human bloodhound. He hid behind a clunky pair of black-framed glasses that looked as though they would tempt a steroid-pumped jock to put his fist through them. Through the lenses, he made a flickering glance in her direction.

Michelle pressed her temple against the swell of her rising migraine, turning heel and striding out to her car.

* * *

**Continues next week...**

* * *

_Author's Notes:_

_GUESS WHO'S BACK AFTER A 2+ YEAR ABSENCE, BABY._

_SURPRISE. IT'S ME._

_Love,_

_Megii_


	2. Chapter 2

Polydactyly

_I don't know who you are exactly, but you have a strange influence over him, Miss Grentz. I suggest you watch your step. Whoever controls God controls death._

Dream actress for Michelle Grentz: Cate Blanchett or Robin Wright

* * *

**_Two_**

* * *

With thirty years of insomnia under her belt, staying up all night came with a reluctant, well-practiced ease. How she ached for sleep, but she had no desire for the broken fragments of childhood horrors to plague her this night, not with murder so fresh on her eyes.

She cleaned her house top-to-bottom instead of sleeping. It wasn't a large house, a mere four rooms large: kitchen, conjoined dining and living room, bedroom and attic. She supposed the garage might have counted as a fifth room, considering she used it for storage instead of her car. When there wasn't anything left to clean she made a bunt cake and then pan after pan of cupcakes until her counters were buried under them. She set her computer to playing Chopin and soon found herself looking for something else to distract her. Dawn found her with a ceramic mug of tea resting at her wrist and The Times News on her laptop screen. Her baby grand took up most of the dining/living room, but she felt too restless to sit still for it. Her fingers itched. The house smelled of lemon, flour, and bleach.

At 7:00 she flipped through her rolodex for instrument-makers she knew and called in some favors she was owed. She paused over Tobias Budge's card, recalling the man with pinched distaste, and flipped past it, choosing her friend Altier Roosevelt instead. Altier had been carving up stringed instruments for more years than Michelle had been alive; he knew everyone worth knowing in the music world. She eyed the looping calligraphy of his business card as they talked—his own personal font—and when Jack Crawford called at 7:30 on the dot, she passed along the message that Altier was happy to meet with him.

She hadn't expected to be invited along.

"I'm interested in your insight. You made keen observations yesterday that Special Agent Graham agreed with."

"Seems a bit like overkill to me. I don't know what I could tell you about music that Altier doesn't know upside-down and backwards." She said, refraining from sucking chocolate frosting off her fingers while on the phone.

"I find it's better to be over prepared than not prepared enough."

The words made her pause. "Am I suspect?"

Crawford's wry smile could be heard through the phone. "After reviewing your interview and personal information I can assure you that you aren't suspect. We're confident that the killer is a male."

Michelle looked over the obscene piles of cupcakes stacked in her kitchen. She had no interest in letting Crawford get a thumb in her pie, so to speak, but she did think about whom she might hoist her baking off onto now that the week's concerts and rehearsals had been cancelled.

"Alright. Sure."

* * *

She couldn't be entirely sure if Will Graham was shy or if he just didn't like people. She was betting on the latter. His handshake was limp at the wrist but tight at the knuckles and he let go quickly. She plucked a long, yellowish hair from his shirtsleeve as it fell away and twirled it between her thumb and forefinger.

"Cats or dogs?"

Crawford looked intrigued. Graham blinked as though taking a snapshot through a camera lens.

"Dogs." He nodded at the Tupperware under her arm. "Cupcakes for breakfast?"

"There's no such thing as a bad time for cupcakes," she said with tired humor. "I don't sleep much, or at all sometimes. When you have that much free time you send a lot of time reading. Or baking. Cupcake?" she offered.

Crawford looked between them and didn't seem too keen on what he saw. He looked hard at Graham. "If you're done sizing each other up, we have an appointment to keep."

Graham looked unapologetic, but quietly thanked her for the pastry through a quivering smile. She thought he looked like a nervous dog sizing up his competition.

* * *

**Continues next week...**

* * *

_Author's Notes:_

_Short-ish chapter. It's a red herring-you're not going to be reading the usual "self-insert gets into FBI" here. I haven't the time or tolerance for things that are all the same. Next chapter features a brief cameo from an OC._

_Thank you, lovelies, for your reviews. It's more than what I'd hoped for after so long an __absence and I am grateful for every one of you._

_Love,_

_Megii_


	3. Chapter 3

Polydactyly

* * *

**_Three_**

* * *

Altier Roosevelt was a short, swollen, little old man with glasses that made him resemble a bubble-eyed goldfish. He had square palms and long, flat-ended fingers that were always dry with sawdust. He'd avoided developing arthritis in his hands, his greatest asset, but the disease had settled in his lower half and it was a discourtesy to make him stand for long. His cane was the polished neck and fingerboard of a retired double bass.

Michelle introduced Crawford and Graham to Altier, a bridge between unfamiliar parties, but ultimately excused herself from conversation when the photos came out. She'd seen the remains of Douglas Wilson once already and once was more than enough. If fortune favored her, Crawford would lose interest in her after this and focus on Altier instead. Not that she disliked the man, she thought to herself.

Abandoning the cupcakes in Altier's kitchenette, she made her way into his workshop. Violas hung from the ceiling like plucked Christmas geese, the floor covered in a layer of discarded down wood shavings. Tools lined the walls in orderly arrangement—a place for everything and everything in its place.

There was a new piano in the workshop. Last time she'd been by he was tuning a flowering oak upright with yellowed ivory keys. Now it had been switched out for a half-lacquered grand that was filling the room with the smell of cedar. Testing the keys, she watched the hammers fall and sound like rain. She sank onto the bench with a relieved sigh, scrubbing at the corners of her eyes.

"Dogs or cats?"

She turned toward the door to see Graham. His plaid shirt was politely tucked in, but he was hiding behind the frames of his glasses again. He grew up somewhere small and poor, she thought, and looked as out of place as an elk in an exotic zoo. Michelle allowed her dishwater blonde fringe to fall across her face.

"Neither. I lost interest in having a pet when I was fifteen."

"Why's that?" he approached with cautious steps and she poised her long fingers over the piano's keys.

"A little girl I was babysitting decided it would be a good idea to put her hamster in a microwave."

"That's… disgusting." He said, and looked like he meant it.

"And you?"

"Me?"

"You have…" she counted, "At least four different kinds of dog hair on your clothes. Why dogs?"

He picked at his shirt. Licked his lips. "You're unusually observant."

She toyed with the piano, tapping out a classical intro that avoided all the broken keys. "You like changing the subject. Keeps attention off of yourself, eh?"

He shifted uncomfortably on his feet, watching her hands instead of her face. "I find dogs to be… dependable in a way that people aren't."

Satisfied with his response, she stepped it up, classical notes swirling into War Pig.

"I read Sherlock Holmes obsessively in my twenties. It's always kind of stuck. My insomnia only aids in that; I know enough functionally useless information to fill a library. Twice."

All niceties, really. She didn't doubt his curiosity, but it was only polite buildup to the questions he really wanted answered.

"Why does Jack seem to want you on this case?"

Questions like that. "Feeling threatened, Agent Graham?"

His silence was stony.

"He spoke to me while I was warding off a migraine. I answered his questions in my eagerness to get away and apparently he liked what he heard. It felt… uncomfortable to tell him no, like turning down the president or something."

"You don't seem to eager to be here."

She stopped playing.

"Neither do you."

He looked suddenly vulnerable and more than a little angry. Michelle realized that she'd offended him. Graham surely wasn't used to being read by people he was unfamiliar with and very obviously disliked being dissected with a glance.

"I'm sorry," she said, sincerely. "We're dancing to all the wrong steps here. I don't mean any offense and yet here I am treading on your feet."

"I don't like being psychoanalyzed."

She wrung her hands, tapped the piano distractedly. "If I had a switch that could turn on and off whenever I willed it, I suspect several aspects of my life would be a bit easier. I can't imagine your empathy is like a light switch that comes on only when you want to use it, either."

Something tight in him slowly uncoiled. "Point taken." The cedar perfumed air lightened. Michelle was grateful for it; making new enemies was low on her list of goals. There was something he wanted to say, a question maybe, she could see it growing on his upper lip like a cold sore, but they were interrupted before he could spit it out.

"Michelle-a, bambina!"

"Hello, Altier." She greeted and stood. Altier strode into the workshop on three legs, Crawford trailing just behind him and pausing in the doorway.

"Bambina, you play on a broken piano and still could make Vivaldi wither in envy!"

Michelle smiled at him and allowed her hand to be kissed. "You're too free with your flattery, Altier, eh? It's not true and you know it."

"Of course it is; you play on _my_ pianos." The old man sniffed. "How is the Chickering you bought from me?"

"The baby grand is… well, grand."

"Good! Would that I could have talked you into that cherry Erard, still!"

"It was twice my budget, Altier."

"Small bones, bambina! A Québécois woman should have a French piano!"

Graham and Crawford both looked at her. Michelle thought her nation of origin unimportant, having been an American citizen for some twenty years now, and paid them no mind.

"How was the interview?"

"Informative, but cut short," Crawford said, "Mr. Roosevelt and I will have to finish at a later time. Agent Graham and I are needed back at headquarters. Can you make it home on your own?"

She felt offended at first, then relieved. It seemed that, by excusing herself from the conversation with Crawford and Altier, Michelle had successfully removed herself from Crawford's radar. Buying a cab home seemed a small enough fee for it. Graham was frowning.

She nodded and smiled and was glad when they were gone.

* * *

**Continues next week...**

* * *

_Author's Notes:_

_Chickering was a maker of American pianos. Erard was a maker of French pianos. War Pig is a song by Black Sabbath. "Bambina" is Italian and translates, generally, to "baby."_

_Nobody reviewed Chapter Two! D: Please review! I really want my readers' input, since is one of the first things I have posted online at all in more than two years. I promise treats for everyone who leaves a comment!_

_Love,_

_Megii_


	4. Chapter 4

Polydactyly

* * *

**_Four_**

* * *

There was no body to bury yet, Doug's corpse was still being held under the custody of the FBI until his killer was caught or the flesh started to smell, whichever came first. But despite the lack of traditional ceremony, the Philharmonic Opera House and Wilson family put on a memorial service. Michelle thought it was better this way. The Wilson family consisted of hard-nosed Baptists and the idea of an open-casket ceremony with his flayed throat bared for all to see, as per their tradition, made her shudder. She thought of a faun with its throat slit, a dredged up dream of a memory more than morbid imagination.

The stage was alight with hundreds of flickering white candles and lilies draped the back of every chair. As she had expected, more than one orchestra member quit out of fear. The directors suddenly found themselves pushing back concert dates even further as they floundered through resumes for new musicians. Michelle was glad she had a hefty pillow of savings in her accounts. If she had been living paycheck to paycheck, as she had in her youth, going so long without income was potentially devastating.

After the speeches and a clunky powerpoint, the guests were served cheap Walmart finger foods. Michelle found it beyond her ability to stomach, despite how poorly she knew Doug. It felt like a disservice, and she made her departure after shaking all the right hands.

She dreamed of Douglas Wilson's body. The cello neck jutted grotesquely from his mouth, the ebony column of a black swan's hissing throat. His tailcoat was a set of wings splayed wide. Someone was standing defiantly before the swan, a branch in each hand—or were they antlers? Her sleeping state first thought it was Will Graham, but the figure was too small, the hands fleshy and young—the faceless boy who frequented her dreams. Blood dripped from the swan's beak and with a shriek its head dove toward the child. It was going to devour him.

"_Anniba!_"

Michelle jerked awake and upright, sweat-soaked and weeping. She tasted vomit rising in her gullet and sprinted to the toilet, heaving until all that that was left were dregs of bile. Sleep would not come again this night. She flushed the toilet and turned on the shower, abandoning her pyjamas on the tile. The water was scalding and she stepped into the spray gratefully, her skin quickly taking on a bright pink hue. She let it wash down on her like rain, kneeling at the bottom of the tub in case her symptoms showed any sign of worsening. She closed her eyes and counted backwards from 500.

When the hour turned, she dried and dressed. The moon found her rummaging through the pine chest at the foot of her bed, a plain box full of old diaries, school documents, and classic rock vinyl records. Rereading her tight, swirling script, she pondered on how her illnesses and disabilities had evolved over the years. It wasn't that anything got better, but at forty-three she had learned to cope and live with the things that had made life so hard as a young girl. The insomnia had never really let up, but other things, like her migraines, had grown less frequent and more manageable to bear.

Leafing through a lace-trimmed photo booklet, she wondered what he father could have told her about her illnesses if he hadn't died before his time, his life cut short, literally, by a killer who was never caught. His smile shone through the faded photographs, a distinctly Baltic man with a greying beard and baseball cap. His wife, Michelle's stepmother, was a woman with a sunny disposition who always made sure her stepdaughter was sandwiched between them for photos as snugly as onion skin. Michelle traced the faded curve of her own cheek, a fair-haired little girl who was never quite as tall as she should have been, never quite as full-cheeked as she ought have been; the remnants of a hard infancy in Soviet Europe.

A lifetime of night terrors and thirty years since her father's murder, Michelle still didn't know who "Annabell" was or why she cried her name so often in her memory-riddled nightmares.

At the bottom of the chest was a layer of her stepmother's cookbooks, stapled leaflets that never made it to a publisher after her husband's death. Tucked under those were her father's journals. There weren't many. Most of his journals had been left behind in Russia when he fled with Michelle and took refuge in Canadian borders. She plucked out the oldest of them, fingering the stale brown leather and name stamped into it in peeling gold leaf: _Bronys Grentz._ She gently turned the pages, which threatened to break like bird-bones under her probing fingers and smelled of vanilla, as old books often do. It was written in a less well-known Baltic language and thus beyond Michelle's ability to decipher, in spite of her fluency in four languages other than English.

Her interest was piqued, however, and a simple Google search told her that the language was Lithuanian. Six, she thought, was a good, even number of languages to know. She needed a project to focus on, to keep herself occupied with until the orchestra reassembled. Not trusting Google Translate to give her accurate results, she purchased lesson books on Amazon and began her Lithuanian lessons on an obscure Youtube channel.

Her teeth made quick work of turning a pen cap to a pulp.

* * *

**Continues next week...**

* * *

_Author's Notes:_

_I feel like I should have clever titles for each chapter. Hmm. No conversation in this chapter, but I nevertheless hope that it has been an… insightful chapter, mmyes? Wink wink nudge nudge. I'm glad to finally put some gears into motion. Next chapter we're introduced to a character who only made a brief cameo in canon, but I hope you all remember her once she gets a few words out because I find her fun indeed._

_Next week's update may or may not be late, as I am out of town visiting my penpal of two years in Fort Collins, CO. I took a sixteen hour bus ride to get here._

_Love,_

_Megii_


	5. Chapter 5

Polydactyly

* * *

**_Five_**

* * *

The Pratt Library had a comfortingly large section on Lithuania and its language. Michelle checked out several books and audio CDs with enthusiasm on her way home from the grocery. Her baking was becoming the focus of her ample, sleepless free time. The neighbors were already overwhelmed, though their kids certainly weren't complaining. She left the librarians with a basketful of breakfast danishes oozing jam. The staff had been delighted.

She treated herself to lunch at a café and while reading the paper found herself privy to the demise of Tobias Budge. Crawford had been busy. The horrors that had gone on in the basement of Budge's shop were vague, but sent her stomach turning all the same. That he was confirmed as Doug's killer, however, provided a kind of much-needed closure. She expected to find more than a few bins with gut strings thrown away in them for a few weeks to come. It was enough to make the hardiest musician squirm, truly.

Three people had died in the process of catching Tobias Budge, four if you counted the fact that Budge himself had not survived. The number of people Budge had murdered before Doug was yet to be concluded.

"I just don't believe it."

Michelle looked up from her tea. In the airy space of Mrs. Komeda's kitchen, the novelist looked almost like a homemaker, caught in the golden light of afternoon. It was an incomplete picture, however. The disgust crawling on her face aged her several years.

"Well, I mean, I can _believe_ it," the bob-haired brunette corrected herself, "If they pasted a picture of a unicorn on the front page I don't think I'd believe _that_, but I _met_ the man! I stood face-to-face with him and had no idea what he really was." Her chin trembled and she splayed her fingers across her collar.

Always the peacock, Michelle thought. She reached out to take Komeda's veined hand in her own. There was a soft callous on the knuckle of her middle finger from where her pen rested when she wrote. "Vivian, you couldn't have known. Nobody did. If you feel bad, think of how awful those kids who took lessons from him must feel."

The bony woman softened a little in relief. "I can't imagine how any of his customers must feel." She slipped into the cushion of her dining room chair. "But _you_ knew, Michelle, you never liked that man! You must have sensed it."

"There are plenty of people I dislike. Who could say I disliked him because I subconsciously sensed that Budge was a killer?"

Komeda pursed her thin, poppy-red lips. "Well, whatever you sensed, I'm sticking close to you and your opinion of people from now on. That much I know I can trust."

Michelle wasn't inclined to agree. She'd gotten close to more than one person who had proved, in the end, to have ill intentions. One lucky shot in the dark didn't make for genuine skill. Komeda was a woman as impossible to argue with, though. Her obstinacy was an odd part of what made her charming, and though her passion in life was writing, she had a singing voice of surprising richness for all that her speaking-voice squeaked and grated.

Michelle decided to change the subject.

"Where's Charles?"

Komeda looked lemon-sour at the mention of her husband. Michelle had intended to sweeten the woman's mood and added exactly the wrong ingredient.

"He had to go to Japan to see our mistress. I told him, more times than I should have had to, to use protection. But he's a man, of course he doesn't listen." She sighed. "So now Yuki has a little Charles Junior on the way. Men." Scowling, she wrapped her hands around her coffee cup and sipped from it. "Sometimes I don't know why I agreed to share her with him."

Komeda reached into Michelle's pastry basket and plucked out a miniature pie to bite into with some ferocity. Scarlet pulp dribbled down her chin. Michelle was only the slightest bit phased, already familiar with the Komeda's unorthodox sexual practices.

"She's keeping the child then?"

"She's a Buddhist Christian. I adore the woman, but for god's sake, she cries about people pouring salt on garden snails. It would never occur to her to have an abortion." The thin woman rolled her shoulders and sighed into her pie, swiping cherry juice from the corners of her mouth.

Michelle was childless and she had never married. She had never had any great desire for children, but there lingered a curiosity about what motherhood might have been like if she'd pursed it. She wondered if Komeda's lover had such a curiosity. Komeda herself had never bourne a living child, having suffered through five miscarriages that left her embittered toward people who could successfully carry an embryo to full-term.

"I have a party to go to next week and with my husband and mistress _both_ on the other side of the world I now have no date. It just goes to show, doesn't it?" Her voice grew particularly reedy.

"What kind of party?"

This was the right thing to say, it seemed at last. Komeda's gloomy disposition evaporated as surely as storm clouds and a smile bloomed on her face. Oh, this was a _big_ party then, Michelle realized, in social standing if not size. Komeda hardy ever got this excited over anything that didn't involve a rival author flopping on their latest book.

"Hannibal Lecter is throwing one of his exquisite dinner parties. I bumped into him at the Hunger Fundraiser. It had been far too long since he'd thrown a party and you can be sure I gave him a piece of my mind. I'm so glad he took my words to heart." Her dark eyes glittered and pearly teeth shone. "You should come as my date! Anyone who's anyone is going to be there!"

"Which is why I wasn't invited." The pianist said, giving her friend a level look.

Komeda scoffed. "You weren't invited because you didn't get to meet Hannibal at the fundraiser. The man has exquisite taste and I know he would have eaten you right up if you'd stuck around. You accompanied Lenora's voice beautifully and you should have seen him moon over _her_!"

"Idle gossip bores me, Vivian, you know that." She noted that her tea was starting to get cold.

The novelist pouted. "If you just put up with it even a little you'd be as famous as Yundi Li by now."

"I wouldn't _want_ to be as famous as Yundi Li."

"You played First Piano _and_ First Harpsichord at the Metropolitain Opera for five years, you could do with being a bit more proud of it." Komeda clucked, rolled her eyes, and stood from her chair. She threw her arms out in relish. "Well, now I'm even more excited than I was before! It's been too long since I went out without Charles trailing me. I think I'll buy a new dress and you should too!"

Michelle leaned back in her chair, watching her friend's back in amusement as the older woman nearly skipped down the hall.

"I don't think I explicitly said that I agree to go with you, Vivian."

The novelist giggled like a schoolgirl. "All I heard was 'I agree to go with you, Vivian.' It's too late to back out now, Michelle! I'm going to call Vera to get us fitted right now."

"Vivian, for the love of god, not Vera Wang!"

* * *

**Continues next week...**

* * *

_Author's Notes:_

_Apologies for the late update. I was out of town last week. Mrs. Komeda made a very brief appearance in Season 1 Episode 7, played by Ellen Greene. As you may gather from this chapter, she has a larger role in this story than she did in the series. Mrs. Komeda's backstory is based on the character Vivian from another of Bryan Fuller's tv series: Pushing Daisies, where she was also played by Ellen Greene._

_Next week Michelle has another encounter with Will Graham under unusual circumstances, and a tentative friendship begins to take place._

_Love,_

_Megii_


	6. Chapter 6

Polydactyly

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**_Six_**

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Michelle had been so sure she would get some sleep that night. The orchestra had finally called, telling her that rehearsals resumed the following Monday and she was relaxed. For the first time in a while, she wasn't absorbed in death or her nightmares. She was looking forward to getting more than a few minutes of restless dozing.

Clad in warm pyjamas, her tongue still burning with the mint of mouthwash, she had walked around the house to turn off the lights. First the kitchen, then the living room and porch light went out. Without the porch light, timid shadows sprung forward with sudden elasticity. The trees blackened and the space between them became blue in the relief of the swollen moon. She stood in her doorway for a moment, soaking in the sight, but caught movement when she began to turn away. Squinting into the dark, she made out the silhouette of a man walking between the trees.

An electric current shot up from her toes, stopping her breath and accelerating her heartbeat to an unbearable pounding. As if someone had suddenly dumped ice down her back, Michelle shivered violently then went stiff. She could feel her pupils dilate, eyes straining into the night.

_He found me_.

She moved slowly, like a doe caught in the reflection of a cougar's eye. Gaze fixed outside, she peeled back the door of the coat closet, fumbling blindly for a flashlight and something much more menacing: a box cutter. Clutching them both to her breast, she took a steeling breath, ignoring how her skin crawled, how her blood was freezing in her veins from fear.

It may have been foolhardy, in fact she knew it was, but Michelle wasn't about to let this trespasser get his chance at her. He probably hadn't even realized she was aware of him. She would not allow herself to be snuck up on again; she would sneak up on him first.

Her house slippers muffled her footsteps, but her trespasser wasn't even making an effort to be quiet. Leaves crackled like abandoned candy wrappers under his creeping motions. She thought him foolish, but then she was equally so for doing something this dangerous. Her hands shook. The beds of her fingernails ached from where her nails dug into the flashlight handle. She wondered what she would do if she couldn't fight him off. She had left her cell phone in the house.

Surprisingly, she thought of her stepmother. Though a loving parent, she had been a raving conspiracy theorist who would have assumed that a figure ambling about in the dark was an alien before thinking that it might actually have been a dangerous man. She rather wished her stepmother was with her now.

"Stop. Stop right where you are." Michelle said in a voice that she hoped sounded braver than she felt.

The man staggered on his feet and then stilled.

"No funny business, I-I've got a gun." She lied. "Don't move. Who are you and what are you doing on my property?"

He turned.

Panic swelled up to drown her. "I said don't move!" She flipped the flashlight on, striking him in the face with the sudden brightness, her box cutter held out defensively.

"_Agent Graham_?"

He didn't respond right away, first staring numbly into the light for as many as five seconds before flinching and throwing his hand up to shield himself. He stumbled back, blinking and as disoriented as a fly pressed against a windowpane.

"What… where am I?"

Despite being blinded by the flashlight, his eyes darted around in search of something tangible to grasp onto to root himself into reality with. Her own eyes took him in, the faded white T-shirt, obviously meant for bed and not social attire, bare legs sticking out of a pair of blue boxers. He was barefoot and his brow was freckled with sweat.

"Sleepwalking, eh?" she murmured.

His dark brow furrowed as he recognized her voice, his hand leaving a star-shaped shadow across his eyes. "Michelle Grentz?"

She lowered her flashlight, feeling her limbs burn as fear evaporated off her skin and dissipated. She was so relieved she could have kissed him. "Jesus fucking Christ, Graham. Are you okay?"

He blinked rapidly and rubbed at his face. He swallowed, licked his lips, and swallowed again, voiceless. He always looked so out of place, Michelle thought. He never quite fit into any picture or setting she had seen him in thus far, a Picasso figure haplessly stuck onto the Sistine Chapel against his will.

And he looked as unsettled as she felt. His eyes flickered like candle flames being blown out. They fixated on her hands.

"What's the box cutter for?"

Michelle felt suddenly self-conscious, realizing she still had it pointed at him. Closing the blade, she stuffed it inside her pyjama pocket.

"Thought you were someone else." She mumbled.

He was frowning. "You were expecting to be attacked."

She shrugged him off, though the pit of her belly still felt frothy. "Good thing I was wrong then. Come on," she extended her hand to Graham, palm up, "Let's get you warmed up."

He stared at her hand as though she had six fingers instead of five.

"I think I have an extra pair of socks lying around that are your size." She added.

Graham looked down at his bare feet, dirty and scraped and pricked by thorns. His mouth quivered into a humorless smile that was about a steady as a Jenga tower, but he reached out and accepted the hand offered to him. She could feel him trembling under his skin, and gave his fingers a good squeeze.

The lights that remained on in her house were a will-o-wisp guiding them through the wood. Stumbling up the front steps, she coaxed Graham inside like she would a wounded animal. The relief that came by simply flipping a light switch was enough to make the tension run out of her jaw. Stowing the box cutter and flashlight in the closet, she took down her stepmother's quilt from the top shelf and wrapped it around his shoulders.

He gave a little start, but soon took the edges between his fingers and closed the quilt around him. "Thank you."

Michelle gently drew his hand out and pressed it. "I'll go get those socks. Lie down if you feel like you want to go to sleep."

The socks she was thinking of were tucked away in the attic, buried in a box. She shook a handful of glass marbles out of the soles and skittered back downstairs. Graham was standing right where she had left him, his wide eyes running around the house. Michelle corrected her previous thought, Graham was not a work of Picasso so much as he was a Salvador Dali clock; instead of just being abstract, Graham seemed more like he was melting right out of his picture frame.

"You can sit down, you know."

He nodded and shuffled over to the couch. She noted the mud splatters that had dried on his calves, but didn't hesitate to hand over the socks, old but plush and warm. In her youth they had been pink and she counted the small blessings that had left them a very pale peach instead. When he took them from her she moved away. He was able to watch her as she stepped into the kitchen and lit the stove, pouring milk into a pot.

"Do you sleepwalk often?" She asked. She opened her cabinets, pulling down honey.

It was a moment before he replied. "I don't know. Do you pick up strays often?"

"I don't keep pets, eh, remember?"

"Mm. Picking up strays doesn't always entail keeping them."

The honey was bright against the shine of her spoon, trailing sticky golden thread from the jar to the pot.

"You're avoiding me again, Agent Graham." She had her back to him, but she had a clear mental imagine of him wiping his hands over his stubbled face. She continued before he could formulate a reply. "People who aren't regular sleepwalkers don't usually make it so far from home. You're not one of my immediate neighbors, which means you've probably walked a good half of a mile or more, eh?"

"Seems so."

There was an unsure silence from him. Michelle let him drift in it as she poured the honeyed milk from the stovetop into cups. She didn't pursue more of their conversation until he had taken one of the mugs from her.

"When I was getting my degree at Yale," she began, settling herself into the chair opposite of the couch, "I once went to bed in anticipation of Finals Week, which began the next morning, and I woke up on a ferry halfway through the Long Island Sound after driving off campus and into port." She raised the corners of her lips when he quirked his eyebrows. "So, if you were going to stumble onto anybody's doorstep, I suppose you may have lucked out in it being mine rather than, say, Mallory Goldsmith, eh. His Rottweiler isn't permitted to leave his property without being muzzled."

His nose disappeared into the cup. "'Luck' really isn't the word I'd use to describe it." He said bitterly.

"Well, you're not walking home with some rotti's teeth stuck in your ass, so there is that, though I'm starting to think it might improve your character a bit if you did."

He snorted, spluttering messily into his mug. Milk flecked his cheeks, which had quickly become red. "Well, you don't mince words." He said, wiping his face. He had the grace to wipe the moisture on his shirt instead of her quilt.

"Social etiquette requires a certain level of bullshitting. I'd like us to be frank with one another, Graham." She shrugged one shoulder. "As long as it's two in the morning, anyway. It's too late to bother tiptoeing around the subject. You did enough tiptoeing outside as it is, eh?"

That wrangled a smile from him, fleeting but genuine. "I appreciate frankness. I'm starting to think I taste it too rarely. You didn't have an accent last time we met, but you do now."

"I'm tired. I grew up in a backwater town in Northern Quebec where everyone spoke French with a Naskapi accent."

He gestured minutely at himself. "Backwater Louisiana. Not creole, though."

"Are you a regular sleepwalker?

"No, I… I just… have a lot on my mind."

Michelle took that to mean his job was getting to him in some form or another. She couldn't imagine how the FBI agents who were more than paper-pushers dealt with death so often and intimately. "You must need a vacation _twice_ as badly as Agent Crawford. Take your dogs and nail a 'Gone Fishing' sign on your front door for a couple weeks."

"That's… heh." Graham rubbed at his forehead. "That's the best suggestion anyone's given me all _month_."

Michelle went to take a sip of her warm milk and found only dregs. She unfurled from her chair and rose. "So people _have been_ suggesting things, they've just been shit suggestions."

"Not all of them," he defended. "And I haven't been entirely open with them about the lost time."

"Lost time?"

He'd not meant to say so much and looked startled at his own admission. It was too late, though, the words were out, which he seemed to realize. Michelle waited, curiosity piqued.

He hesitated before answering, his eyes scanning her from the ground up, analyzing. "I have had," he swallowed, "Several incidents… where I will be doing something one moment, then I blink and find myself somewhere else. The first time it happened I had lost at least three hours of time getting from a Virginia beach to my psychiatrist's office back in Baltimore."

She was looking at him hard, deep concern and incredulity so plain on her face that Graham looked a bit taken aback.

"What?"

"That's not sleepwalking."

"No…"

"I'm not sure that sounds like something I would call 'lost time.'"

Dread was draining the color from his face. For the first time, he met her eyes and didn't look away. "What would you call it?"

"I'd call it Psychogenic NES, specifically a dissociative seizure. It's a cut-off mechanism for triggering situations. They're typically caused by psychological or emotional stress—a person splits off from their feelings or a situation because it is too difficult to cope with. It can be a delayed symptom of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Not all seizures involve a severe physical response; sometimes it is "altered awareness." I know because I have e…" Her arm suddenly felt numb and tingly. Graham blurred severely.

"Miss Grentz!"

"Ah… Shit," her voice cracked as she realized what was happening. Then her legs went out from under her and she collapsed. If she hit anything on the way down, she was already too far gone to feel it.

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**Continues next week...**

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_Author's Notes:_

_Writing this story entailed a surprising amount of medical research. I have a couple of more pillow chapters left, but I need to get writing again. I have been distracted lately. Summer is here!_

_Talk between Will and Michelle is fun to write. Next week we find out a little bit about__ what's up with Michelle._

___IF YOU LIKE THIS STORY PLEASE REVIEW!_

_Love,_

_Megii_


	7. Chapter 7

Polydactyly

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**_Seven_**

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The way Grentz fell brought to mind the image of a puppet having its strings snipped on a stage. The timing was perfect. She crumpled like a silk sheet. Her blonde head came close to striking the table, missing it by only a few inches.

A seizure, he realized, as she jerked and thrashed on the carpet. For one painful moment Graham was frozen. Her hand struck the table with a sickening, hollow noise. He sprung off the couch, quilt falling behind, and knelt at her side, shoving the table back. Kick-knacks fell off it and rolled to the floor.

"Miss Grentz! Grentz!" He called as he shook her.

Her long, elegant hands transformed into claws, legs cycling, spittle congealing in the corner of her thin, puckered mouth. Her eyes were fully dilated, as though her pupils were black holes that could suck everything in, starting with the thin rim of color. In the dim light, her irises appeared a shade of red like crusted blood, almost maroon. He could hear her molars grinding. She writhed like a fish in his hands.

Graham fumbled. He felt Grentz's pain echoing through him and cursed his empathy, cursed her wide, expressive eyes. She was obviously epileptic, he saw now. The alarm he had felt about the possibility of Dr. Sutcliffe being wrong about his brain scan took a back seat to the more immediate task at hand: helping Michelle Grentz.

There was a blocky white phone on a side table. The buttons glowed a dim, alien green as he punched in Hannibal Lecter's phone number. When he received the voicemail, he cursed, hung up, and dialed again. This time it was answered.

"_Hello_." Lecter's voice was dark with displeasure. Graham mentally recoiled, almost hung up, then shook off his friend's unusually primal tone of voice.

"Doctor Lecter."

"_Will?"_ The unkindness evaporated. Replaced quickly by alert concern. "_Will it is very late. What's wrong?"_

"There's a woman having a seizure."

"_A seizure? Will, are you all right?"_

Graham pressed his hand against his face and tried to focus on Lecter's voice instead of becoming absorbed in Grentz's convulsions. "I was sleepwalking, a neighbor found me and took me in. I'm still… can't quite think straight. She's an epileptic; I can't remember what to do."

_"How long has she been seizing?"_

"Maybe two minutes."

"_If she has epilepsy, she should have a medical bracelet or necklace or ID card. Can you find that for me, Will?"_

His hands shook, but Graham knelt by the woman's side again. His fingers touched the side of her face. He tried not to think of how he'd dug his fingers into the grinning cheekbones of Beth LeBeau in a position similar to this. Grentz's too-large eyes flickered away, as though shying away from him. Her torso began to shift to the side and her arm smacked against his chest, the claw of a hand curling. He could hear her saliva bubbling between her teeth as she breathed. It was dribbling down her cheek and pooling in the shell of her ear.

"She has a medical ID bracelet."

_"What does it say?"_

Graham gingerly held up the woman's shaking hand, flipping the steel plate around to read the back.

"Severe migraines, penicillin allergy, PTE. What's PTE?" Her fingers began to snake around his wrist. He shook her off.

"_It stands for post-traumatic epilepsy, which means she has had a traumatic brain injury. She'll be sensitive, you must be careful with her head_."

"What do I have to do?"

_"You need to time how long her seizure lasts. Find a clock nearby and keep tabs on the time."_

Graham's eyes darted around the room, settling on a wooden cuckoo clock embellished with painted pinecones and swirling arrows for hands. He couldn't read it. He looked at the phone instead. 2:26 am.

"Okay, now what?"

_"Now you need to roll her on her side and get a cushion under her head, like a pillow or a folded shirt. She could swallow her tongue or choke on vomit if left on her back. Since she has a head injury, I would advise you to be especially careful. If there are any sharp or cornered objects nearby that she might hurt herself on while thrashing, move them out of the way, if you can. Stay where you are, Will, I'm on my way. Do you know the address?"_

"No, but there's a pile of mail on the kitchen counter. This house can't be far from mine."

_"Then I should be there in about thirty minutes. Stay on the phone. Let me know if her seizure closes in on the five-minute mark. If she goes over that we will call an ambulance."_

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**Continues next week...**

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_Author's Notes:_

_How about that finale, eh? Next chapter we see a reunion you all have been eager for. _

_Expect the updates for this story to go from weekly to bi-monthly. I scored a second job._

_If you read it, please review it!_

_Love,_

_Megii_


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